Recruiting Strategy - Building a Pipeline

Google the phrase “Building a Candidate Pipeline” and you’ll get 19,000,000+ results describing oil and gas pipelines. It’s like the discussion about The Keystone XL Pipeline. Both sides argue points related to impact, cost, resources, risks and aesthetics. The analogy works for the topic of proactive recruiting and is the subject of the second installment in Capstone’s Summer Series.  

Having a stable of qualified talent for future positions is low on the priority list compared to sales, marketing and management, yet when its crunch time to fill a position you drop everything. Scrambling to make a hire doesn’t feel good. It costs more money than you set out to spend. Sometimes you have to settle for a candidate that isn’t ideal.

Here are a few ways your company can start building an effective talent acquisition pipeline.

BUILD YESTERDAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED TOMORROW

My team often connects with remarkable candidates for whom we have no immediate opening, but we still spend significant time vetting them for future positions. You should do the same. Get introduced to quality candidates and learn about their skills. It pays dividends in the future.

INTERNALLY ADVERTISE YOUR RECRUITING STRATEGY

Employees are your best bullhorn to the masses. Don’t rely on one person or department to build the entire pipeline. For consistency create advertising using employees from different departments to explain why they like about your firm and their job. Have a formal review on a website like Glassdoor. Incentivize through an employee referral program. Earn a spot on a “Best Company” business list.

TRACK AND ORGANIZE DATA

Avoid paper pipelines. Applicant Tracking Systems are extremely valuable and document candidate information, correspondence and EEOC data. Smaller companies use an Excel spreadsheet or Outlook folder(s) as a substitute. Keep in mind data entry is just an important as the system. Candidate information is useless if you can’t find it in the future.

As always please reach out if you want to explore these ideas further. We’ve learned from our own mistakes and the mistakes of others when building pipelines. I’m happy to share the good and bad to make certain your experience is a positive one!